


it was all for this

by younglegends



Category: Oh My Girl (Band), Windy Day - Oh My Girl (Music Video)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amnesia, Dreams, F/F, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-21 20:32:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglegends/pseuds/younglegends
Summary: Lately Yooa had been having strange dreams.





	it was all for this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lillypillylies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillypillylies/gifts).



> I have always loved this MV, so thank you for giving me the chance to run wild with it. Happy Yuletide!

  

 

> _all day, my heart used to feel restless_   
>  _[but it was all for this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJqhKWo89FQ) _   
>  _emotions that were pressed into a corner of my heart_   
>  _have awakened from a deep sleep_

 

 

Yooa sat in her chair. Heels of her shoes clicking listlessly against the floor. At the front of the classroom, her teacher droned on and on, and Yooa slid forward, pillowed her head sideways on her arms.

Outside the window, the tall grasses rustled in the breeze. The beginnings of spring. Far too warm to be stuck in a classroom. Yooa swung her legs, back and forth under her desk. She could see the woods from here, a thicket of green, beckoning.

One desk over, Hyojung was diligently taking notes, her pencil scratching against the page. Mimi passed a note to Seunghee, both of them giggling quietly to themselves at the thrill of getting away with it. Binnie jabbed Mimi in the shoulder with her pen to get them to shut up. In the row behind them, Arin tapped her pencil against her chin, her eyes glazed over, stuck in a daydream.

Yooa yawned. Rubbed at her eyes. Outside, in the distance—a flash of colour. She peered closer at it. There, among the grasses, the bushes by the path to the woods. A pinwheel stuck in the ground.

As she watched, the pinwheel slowly started to spin.

 

 

*

 

 

“And then she told me that he had a  _crush_ on her!” Seunghee popped a strawberry into her mouth. “He confessed to her in a note he put in her locker!”

“Like a love note?” Arin gasped, eyes wide. “I thought that only happened in dramas!”

Binnie rapped her knuckles lightly against Arin’s forehead. “Stop comparing everything to dramas, silly!”

“No, it’s cute,” Hyojung said in singsong, squeezing Arin’s cheeks. “Never grow up, Arinnie!”

They were having a picnic on the edge of the field. Their pink tablecloth was weighed down in the grass by carefully arranged bowls and plates. End-of-year exams were approaching, and they needed to take their pleasures whenever they could, after all.

Yooa leaned back, stared up at the clear blue sky. On a day like this, there was hardly even a breeze. She fanned herself listlessly with her hand. The dry heat reminded her of her childhood summers, endless afternoons spent chasing her friends in the fields, snatches of laughter in the air. What was that game they used to play? Where they pretended to be deer, and someone was the hunter, coming to catch them with her gun. Yooa was always the best at being a deer; the best at running, at hiding. No one could find her if she didn’t want to be found.

Who was it who played the hunter, again?

“This summer, we should go on a road trip,” Mimi announced out of nowhere, through a mouthful of strawberry cake. “It’ll be, like, our last chance to do anything fun, before our lives get sucked up into exams and university applications.”

Binnie squinted at her. “Who’s gonna drive? You ran into that stop sign just last week.”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” Mimi went on, ignoring her entirely.

“It  _would_ be good incentive for all of you to get your licenses,” Hyojung said, fork poised thoughtfully in the air.

“Unnie, you  _just_ told me to never grow up!” Arin protested.

“What do you think, Yooa?” Mimi turned to look at her. “You’ve been so quiet, it’s kinda weird.”

“Hmm?” Yooa idly traced a pattern over her bare knee. Imagined it mapped out a deep-running restlessness, an old itch she couldn’t outgrow, only let crawl out new and shiny over her skin. Deer did that, too, she’d learned from her biology textbook. When they started to mature they had to scratch their heads against tree trunks to scrape down the skin, let their antlers out. But afterward, they wore them with magnificence. Like crowns.

“Yooa! Hello? Are you in there?”

“Sorry,” Yooa said, snapping out of it. “I’m just...”

Her voice trailed off.

There was a girl staring back at her, among the trees. Dressed all in red.

The girl tilted her head. Her long hair spilled over her shoulders, and she brushed it behind her ear, revealing her pale, curious face.

She smiled.

Yooa blinked at her.

She couldn’t have said why she did it, but she smiled back.

“...earth to Yooa. Are you listening?”

“What?” Yooa turned back to the group. Mimi was waving a strawberry in her face.

“You totally spaced out, man. Are you staying up late watching choreography videos again?”

“Did you see...” Yooa turned back, but the girl was gone.

“See what?”

Yooa shook her head. “Nothing.” She might have imagined it. And if she hadn’t—it felt like the sort of thing she should keep to herself. A secret.

“Oi, Yooa, you’re being weird!”

“Takes one to know one,” Yooa said, and took a bite out of the strawberry in Mimi’s hand, still outstretched and offered before her, sharp and ripe and red.

 

 

*

 

 

Lately Yooa had been having strange dreams.

Although the dreams weren’t the strange part, to be honest. She could never remember any of them, anyway. What came after was the strange part. Yooa would open her eyes to find herself standing at the foot of her bed, or at her window, or before her door. Always with one arm outstretched, hand raised, reaching.

“I didn’t know you sleepwalked,” Seunghee said to her one morning, on the walk to school. They’d been cramming for a study session at Seunghee’s house late the night before, when Yooa had drifted off, and apparently started moving around.

“Neither did I,” Yooa admitted.

“It was so sudden. One second you were drooling all over Mimi’s notes, and the next—you just got up and walked out the door. I thought you had to go to the bathroom or something, but when we found you—you were just standing at the front door, like you were waiting for someone to open it.”

“Must’ve been weird,” Yooa said, shrugging.

“It was,” Seunghee said, but there was something uncertain in her eyes, almost guarded. “It kind of scared me.”

A flash of red-hot irritation seared through Yooa, then: that she didn’t really understand, that none of them did. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come.

“Don’t worry,” Yooa said, slinging an arm around Seunghee, smiling big and wide. It was spring, and would be for a while yet; the gentle breeze lifted the hair off their shoulders, ran down the backs of their necks. Under its soft touch, everything felt like it could be forgiven. “Next time, all you’ve gotta do is just wake me up, okay?”

Seunghee snorted. “Next time, I’ll just draw on your face.” But she didn’t pull away, only clung onto her just as tight.

Around them, at their feet, the grasses swayed in the wind.

 

 

*

 

 

“Ugh,” Mimi said, poking at the bags under her eyes. “I look like a raccoon.”

Yooa examined her teeth in the grimy bathroom mirror. There was a lipstick stain on her front tooth. She wet her finger under the tap, scrubbed at the enamel until it came off.

“This school year is gonna kill me.” Mimi poked at her cheeks, pouted at her reflection. “I think I got, what, three hours of sleep last night? Just to bomb that test anyway. What’s the point? Are they trying to build character, or drive us the ground?”

Yooa rummaged through the pockets of her bag. Pulled out her tube of lip tint.

“How’d you do, anyway?” Mimi swivelled around to look at her, palms braced on the side of the sink. They were running late for their class; the bell would ring any moment, now. But the bathroom was empty, and it was a rare reprieve from the rush of the hallway crowds, the endless drone of class. “Did you get A for question fourteen? I wasted so much time panicking over that one, when it turned out I was inputting the wrong numbers into my calculator.”

Yooa thought about it. The blank page she’d handed in.

“Definitely A,” she said, running the brush over her lips.

Mimi frowned at her. “Hey. Yooa. What’s with you?”

“What do you mean?”

Mimi squinted at her. Head tilted. A fall of straight, golden hair. “I dunno. You tell me. Why are you so quiet lately? Usually I can never get you to shut up.”

She wasn’t wrong. As friends, they complemented each other so well precisely due to their matching flair for the dramatic, always blowing their problems out of proportion, playing along with each other’s flights of fancy. They could spend forever obsessing over the wording of a received text or analyzing the intent of a sideways glance in the hall. It was what made life fun. They were on the same side of a line that kept out everything else.

Lately, though, Yooa could see that line extending longer and longer into the distance. Wanted to see just how far it went.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Yooa said. Her mouth tasted sticky and sweet. “It’s just a math test, you know.”

Mimi boggled at her. “ _Just_ a math test? It was, like, thirty percent of our grade! What are you talking about?”

Yooa shrugged. “Nothing. Just... none of this even matters. You know that, right? None of this is...”

“What?”

Yooa puckered her lips in the mirror. “Real.”

The bell rang, loud and shrill.

Mimi was staring at her.

“Ha, ha,” she said eventually. “Good one, Yooa. You almost gave me a heart attack.”

Her laughter was weak, for a joke.

Yooa checked her teeth in the mirror again. Clean and white, framed by the heart-shaped red of her lips. She liked the colour she had chosen. It reminded her of the girl in the forest, the smile on her face that promised things to come.

“Sure,” she said. “Let’s go, come on.”

Their teacher scolded Mimi’s ear off for being late. But she didn’t seem to notice Yooa at all.

 

 

*

 

 

“Okay, my turn,” Binnie said, propped up on her elbows. Their sleeping bags were arranged in a six-pointed star on the floor of the living room. All of them were lying on their stomachs, faces gathered close in a secretive huddle at its centre. “Mimi. Truth or dare?”

Mimi grinned. “Dare.”

Binnie narrowed her eyes, thinking about it. “Okay. I dare you to lick Arinnie’s elbow.”

Seunghee choked on her soda, spluttering everywhere.

“Why me!” Arin wailed.

Mimi was already swooping in. Arin let out a shriek, but Mimi resurfaced with eyes glittering, triumphant. A piece of her own hair was stuck to her mouth.

“What, like it’s hard,” she said. “Binnie-yah, your dares are so lame!”

Hyojung swatted her with a pillow. “Not so loud,” she whisper-hissed, “my parents are asleep!”

Yooa stifled a yawn. It was barely midnight, and the sleepover was just getting started. So far, Seunghee had been forced to prank call her class president, Binnie had uploaded an ugly selfie, and Arin had admitted with cheeks burning red the name of her first crush. Pretty tame, as far as truth or dare went.

“Fine,” Binnie said, crossing her arms. “Hit me, then.”

“You just went,” Mimi said. Her gaze wandered around their circle, only to land on Yooa. The edge of her mouth curled up in a victorious grin. “Hey. Yooa. Truth or dare?”

Yooa wondered if it was some kind of compensation for their bathroom conversation, earlier that day. Not revenge—Mimi wasn’t capable of that—but a clumsy, overeager effort to push things back into place, tilt the world right side up once more. Like slapping a malfunctioning TV set to get it working again.

“Dare,” Yooa said, and felt it flicker like a screen full of static.

Arin and Hyojung oohed in unison.

“Careful, Yooa,” Binnie said, with a flick of her hair. “She’s got something to prove.”

“Shush,” Mimi said, waving her away. “Okay, I’ve got a good one. Yooa—I dare you to climb up on the roof.”

Seunghee gasped. “Are you crazy? At this time of night? She’ll fall off and die!”

“She can use that old oak tree next to the window,” Mimi said defensively, but she was losing steam, Yooa could tell.

Yooa cut in before Mimi could change her mind. “I’ll do it.”

Seunghee turned to her. “Are  _you_ crazy?”

“Yooa,” Hyojung said, her face full of concern. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Yooa gritted her teeth. “I’ll  _do_ it,” she repeated, and she jumped to her feet, made for the living room window. She threw up the sash, peered out. The oak tree in Hyojung’s yard stood tall and sturdy as ever, branches spread skyward.

“Piece of cake,” Mimi said, at her shoulder. She shot her a reassuring smile, wide and gummy. “You can do it, right?”

_You’re still on my side, right?_

Mimi had never been a good hunter, in their childhood games. She gave up the chase too easily; let go of all the wild things slipping through her fingers. No, they always let someone else play the hunter, every time.

Who was it, again?

Yooa vaulted over the sill. Her bare feet thudded against soft grass. The night wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold, either, the air languid and still. She could feel her blood pumping at the thrill of a challenge.

The other girls were clustered around the open window. “You’re crazy,” Seunghee was muttering, “you’re actually doing it.”

“Can we turn on the light?” Binnie was filming on her phone. “It’s too dark to catch anything.”

“Unnie,” Arin said, clinging to Hyojung’s arm. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Watch me,” Yooa said, and she gripped the bark in her hands, started to ascend.

She got the first three-quarters of the way through sheer adrenaline alone. Then her hands started to drag over the bark, splinters pricking at the soft tender skin of her palms, the soles of her feet. Her nightgown wasn't exactly the best outfit of choice, either; the long skirt kept getting caught in the branches. She wished she'd thought to tie up her hair. Everything was an obstacle, on her way to the edge of the rooftop in the periphery of her vision, the pursuit of her looming end goal.

“Be careful,” Hyojung was calling through cupped palms, neck craned out the window. Yooa didn’t look down. Sweat dripped into her eyes, down the back of her neck. She could feel strips of her nightgown tearing away, tangled in the branches. The cool night air against her skin, spurring her on.

She gripped the drainpipe in her hands, hauled herself up and over the rooftop. The tiles scraping against her knees.

“She did it,” Seunghee said, “she actually  _did_ it!”

“Of course she did,” Mimi said, smug.

“You are going to get into  _so_ much trouble,” Binnie said.

“Yooa,” Hyojung said. “How are you going to get back down?”

Yooa was still sprawled out over the rooftop, staring up at the sky. There were hardly any stars out tonight, or else it was too light to see. Her pulse was skidding in her throat. I did it, she thought; what she meant by  _it,_ she was not sure. She dragged herself up off the tiles, peered over the edge of the roof.

The view was disappointing. She wasn’t as high up as she’d imagined. She could see the forest, though, at the edge of the suburb. Thick and full of shadows. Deep within, she could make out the old hedge maze, long overgrown.

Yooa squinted closer. Funny. There seemed to be something glinting inside that maze, straight at her.

Perhaps only for her. Like a wink.

“Yooa?”

She looked down. They had all spilled out onto the yard, staring up at her. Hair and nightgowns aflutter. Where had that wind come from?

“Yooa, what are you doing?” Mimi’s face was white.

“Yooa,” Hyojung said, her voice very deliberate and precise, holding careful eye contact. As though speaking to a spooked animal. “Yooa, you have to crouch low, and reach out and grab the branch. That one there, closest to you. Can you do that?”

Something inside Yooa snapped to attention. Of course she could do that. Then she realized where she was, what position she was standing in. Poised at the edge of the rooftop, toes curled around rim of the gutter. Swaying like a tree in the wind.

She took a long, clean breath. Air cold inside her lungs. Took one last look at the maze, in the forest. Whatever was shining there was still waiting, bright as a star in the sky.

Then she did what she was told. Crouched low, reached out, and grabbed the branch. The way down was far easier than the rise.

When she was back on the ground the others swarmed around her, hands clutching at her nightgown, her arms, her hands, as though making sure she was real. “That was so scary,” Arin said, blinking away the wetness of her eyes. Seunghee ran her hand through Yooa’s hair, untangling stray leaves. Hyojung was arguing with Binnie over whether or not they should wake up her parents.

Mimi was the only one who didn’t touch her at all, arms wrapped around herself, staring at her as though she were a stranger.

“Yooa, that wasn’t funny,” Mimi said.

Seunghee was fussing with a twig caught in the string of Yooa’s necklace. Yooa swatted her away, annoyed. “Not everything is supposed to be,” she said.

Mimi’s lips were trembling. “I don’t get you at all.”

Good, Yooa thought. Good.

They went straight to bed after that, the excitement of the game effectively dispelled. Yooa lay awake for a long time, staring up at the ceiling, palms still tingling from something far past pain.

She’d done it; she’d done something.

 

 

*

 

 

She woke up in the maze.

She registered it in flashes of sensation. First the cold, prickling the skin of her arms into goosebumps. Then the soreness of her bare feet, against the dirt of the forest floor. A light breeze rustled the thickets, the leaves and grass all around her.  

Had she been running?

In the distance, someone called her name.

Yooa recognized the voice. It was Hyojung. Through the thick walls of hedge, she could make out faint flashlight beams. They were searching, she realized. Searching for her, because she had...

What?

“Sleepwalking,” Yooa said, aloud, “I must have been sleepwalking, again...”

A blur of movement, up ahead. The hem of a long red dress, trailing across the floor, disappearing around the corner of the maze.

Yooa stared after it.

“Oh, of course,” she said, “the game,” and she started to follow.

It was terribly dark, and yet somehow Yooa did not stumble, not once. She held her arms out at her sides, fingertips trailing against the thick shrubbery, through the air. The girl she was chasing kept just enough distance for Yooa to never be able to see her face, only the back of her head, the curve of her cheek, the points of her ears sticking up through her long, dark hair.

“Wait,” Yooa said, “wait,” but the girl did not wait. Just kept ducking around corners, drawing them deeper and deeper into the maze, her red skirt fluttering behind her in the wind.

The voices of her friends were getting louder now, but Yooa never bumped into them. Sometimes she could hear them on the other side of a wall; Seunghee’s anxious giggle, Mimi’s voice edged rough with sleep, Hyojung’s clear call. They might as well have been a world away, but Yooa felt strangely comforted by their familiar noise, the proof of their presence. They could not follow her to where she was going, but they were here, still; they were looking for her. All of a sudden she missed them, the way Arin hid her cheeks when she got shy, Binnie’s annoying cutesy act whenever she wanted something, Mimi’s wicked grin. Her dear friends. Yet it did not occur to Yooa to stop. She couldn’t stop, now; she was too far gone, she was so close.

There—a glint of light at her feet. This was what she had sighted from the rooftop: an ornate silver box, lined with velvet. Her heart leapt into her throat. There it was, and she descended upon it in an almost savage triumph, knees hitting the ground and fingers fumbling with the delicate clasp. Here it was, at last.

They found her just as she opened the lid, a wild wind bursting from within, sending her hair flying up around her face.

It was empty.

“Yooa, there you are!” Hyojung said. “We’ve been worried sick about you.”

“We’ve been searching for you all night,” Binnie said.

Seunghee ventured closer, an uncertain look upon her face. “Yooa? Why are you crying?”

The taste of salt on her lips.

“I don’t remember,” she whispered.

 

 

*

 

 

Yooa stared up at the ceiling without quite seeing it.

Around her, she could hear her friends, fast asleep. The soft sounds of their breathing, their dreaming.

If she just fell asleep, now, if she slipped under—

But her heart beat steady in her chest that rose and fell in enduring calm, knowing that she was on the verge of something new, knowing it was waiting for her like a horizon that would be reached regardless of the speed she rose to met it. A morning, or the crest of a wave; either way, still poised to break. It was coming, and she would not run away. She would not run at all.

A rustle, beside her.

“Hey, Yooa. Are you awake?”

“Yes,” Yooa said. “I am.”

She turned her head, to see Mimi beside her, lying on her side with her head propped up on one elbow. Her cheeks were puffy with sleep. Yooa felt an urge to reach out and pat them, the way a loving best friend would. She let it pass her by.

“I can’t sleep,” Mimi whispered. A pause. “What are you thinking about?”

Yooa considered it.

“Do you remember that game we used to play? When we were children?”

“What game?”

“The game where we were deer, and we all had to run away from the hunter. Before she caught us with her gun.”

“Who?”

“You don’t remember?”

Mimi was frowning. “I’ve never played a game like that,” she said.

Yooa turned back to face the ceiling. “Never mind.”

There was another silence.

“Hey,” Mimi said, after a while. “Yooa. We’re gonna go on that road trip, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We’re gonna get through our exams, and pass all our classes, and go see the world. We’re gonna go to the beach. Don’t you wanna go to the beach? And we’re gonna swim in the ocean and fall in love with strangers and eat ice cream until we puke. When summer comes.”

Yooa let a smile fall soft upon her face.

“It sounds lovely,” she said. “Like a dream.”

“We’ve got wonderful things ahead of us,” Mimi said.

Yooa turned to her. Mimi’s eyes were gleaming bright in the near darkness.

“Yes,” Yooa agreed. “We do.”

Outside, the day was breaking with the light of sunrise, as had been promised. A last surge of tenderness entered Yooa, then. Surely she could spare a final affection. Gratefulness, for everything; and a promise of her own. That they would see each other again.

She reached out, took Mimi’s hand.

Catch me, Yooa thought, and closed her eyes.

 

 

*

 

 

The girl was waiting for her in the trees.

“You came,” she said. Eyes alight with joy. “You came.”

“Of course I came,” Yooa said automatically, and then, “who are you?”

But even as she said it, a name sprang into her throat. Years of childhood laughter.  _Jiho-yah, you can’t catch me, you’re too slow!_

“I’ve missed you so much,” Jiho said. “I’ve waited so long.”

“The game,” Yooa said. Her eyes went to Jiho’s hand, but she wasn’t holding the gun. “Do you remember the rules?”

“Don’t worry,” Jiho said. “It can’t hurt us. It’s just a game.”

She lifted a hand, brought it up to cup Yooa’s face. Tucking her hair behind her ear. Yooa felt herself sagging into the touch, just a little.

“You’ll like it here,” said Jiho. “With me.”

“Wait,” said Yooa, a faint stirring of something like memory. “My friends.”

Jiho smiled. “Oh, don’t worry. They’ll come back to us, eventually. All of them.”

She trailed her fingers along the shell of Yooa’s ear. “Just like you did.”

Yooa shivered.

Jiho drew her hand away, and Yooa found herself leaning forward after it, chasing the softness of her palm, her nimble fingers. Jiho patted her cheeks. Then placed something on her head, cold and hard. A silver tiara, about the size that would fit into a velvet-lined box. The teeth of the headband gliding into Yooa’s hair, tugging at the skin of her scalp.

“For you,” Jiho said, and then she tugged up Yooa’s chin and swept her forward, into a kiss. When their mouths met, Yooa felt a warmth rush through her like a spring wind, flooding her senses and taking root. A great shimmer of growing things, green and gold and alive.

“Oh,” Yooa said, into the swell of Jiho’s lips, and her voice was not just one voice, but all of them, old and echoing deep. “Oh.” Her heart felt full, the sharp pinprick pain of it about to burst, about to bloom.

“You see,” Jiho said, her breath hot upon Yooa’s face. “Do you see, now?”

Yooa tilted her forehead against hers, felt a dizzying smile break upon her face. “I remember,” she said, in wonder. “I remember.”

They came together once more; and this time, they did not draw apart.

 

 

*

 

 

Somewhere very far away, the pinwheel fell still.

 

 

*

 

 

Arin rested her head on her palm, staring forward at the desk before her, the desk that had always been empty for as long as she could remember. She peered out at the gold light over the fields, over the forest, late spring turning into summer.

Was that a flash of colour in the distance?

Outside the window, the pinwheel started to spin.

 

 


End file.
